Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

“Hmph…” was Otis’s only reply. Brian spoke with the surety of youth, he figured. It was the common malady of a man under thirty, that heady self-regard that convinced a fella to throw himself out a perfectly good airplane or jump off a bridge with nothing but a rubber band strapped to his ankles to save him. It was how they were when they came up in the world warm and safe, not having to do without (not really) when the things they needed were always placed within easy reach. People such as that didn’t learn to be wary until later in life, in Otis’s estimation, when mother nature started taking things away as each birthday passed rather than give them to you; your sight, your hearing, your hair, your elasticity, your security, your sex drive, your peace of mind. Only, Brian was like the rest of them now, marching over a leveled playing field. The world had taken it all away from them, every survivor having been equally violated by the Plague; passing through all of their lives like God’s own killer angel, passing over only a handful of chosen survivors according to some hidden and terrible design.

Yet, Brian was still Brian; seemingly untouched and unspoiled. It could be intensely aggravating at times. It was also one of the things that made Otis love him as he loved his own son, Ben, who at that moment was locked up in the garage right alongside the others who couldn’t, shouldn’t, or wouldn’t fight. Otis looked at the young man sitting up on the railing, back as straight as a board, and saw how he awkwardly held his own rifle; awkward despite untold hours under Gibs’s tutelage. He remembered the wide look of shock in Brian’s eyes as they’d shoved the rifle into his hands, the panic dancing about just beneath the surface of his shimmering pupils. Otis had regarded that look for all of two seconds before he instructed Brian to, “Jus’ stay your ass nex’ to mine, hear?”

He’d rattled his head in a grateful nod and shadowed the older man for the remainder of the evening and well into the following morning.

And Otis, who loved him like his own son, was fine with this.

They remained quiet for a time, Otis scanning over the wide valley floor while Brian fidgeted, and the sun climbed ever higher in the sky, warming the air and waking the land. The local birds, already up and chirping since the dimness of first light, became fervent in their activity, flitting from point to point on errands of dire importance. He watched a while, amused, as a clutch of sparrows chased a small, darting black bird between the homes and trailers, up over roofs, through branches, and out into the distance. He thought it might have been a lark of some sort, though the damned thing had been moving far too quickly to be sure. A cloud passed overhead, momentarily dimming his surroundings, as the miniature struggle for dominance traveled beyond his ability to perceive and he shrugged into his jacket. The feeling of amusement had departed.

When he judged the time to be something like thirty minutes past the last time he’d checked in, he keyed the radio and asked, “How we looking out there, folks?”

He waited a moment in silence, imagining some of them yawning their way up out of a drowse, smacking their lips as they pawed at their own radios. His finger twitched in anticipation of trying again, but his own earpiece hissed before he could squeeze.

“Quiet out here,” Isaiah said. He was out in his own cluster of new people , along with Victor and Drew. Otis snorted quietly at his mind’s own inner-workings as he pictured them huddled up in the trees. New people . How long had they been here in the valley, now? A year? Maybe not a full year but it had to be getting on close to one, for sure. Not really new, so much as all that went, and yet he assumed they would remain the new people until another group arrived to assume the title. He figured they’d keep on being new twenty years from now if no one else came along.

Alan’s voice chirped up over the radio, saying, “Nothing out on my end, either.” As he spoke, Otis thought he heard Monica’s voice in the background, running in a monotone of wordless mutterings. Whatever it was, her words were lost to nothingness when Alan broke the connection.

A few moments later, Fred’s voice from his position on the last stretch of trail leading up to the cleft: “All clear…”

Otis nodded to himself, the accepting look on his face stating that he understood the situation and would bear it, regardless of desire. He took a small sip of ice-cold coffee from his mug and swished the bitter liquid around in his mouth.

“I had this friend once that used to get the hiccups when he was nervous,” Brian mused. He spoke in a voice laden with guileless amazement, as though he’d just proclaimed that this friend had once managed to lasso a tornado on a whim. He earnestly nodded a few times while still looking out into the distance of the field, not even bothering to gauge Otis’s reaction to such profound news, and then giggled softly. “Happened to him every time. He’d get that way before Finals. We’d all be sitting in class trying to bubble in those Scantron sheets—if we were lucky enough to pull a multiple choice exam, anyway—and there he’d be at the back of the room hiccupping every few seconds. It was really loud, too! The professors used to get pissed at him, you know? They thought he was doing it on purpose to be disruptive, but he wasn’t. I mean, you could tell he wasn’t faking; his hands would get all sweaty and everything. He even had to touch the Scantron with only his fingertips, or he’d soak it through. I remember this one professor we had, uh… Courtney—he wanted to throw my friend out of class. Alexi was his name—my friend, not the professor, that was Courtney, like I said. He was standing up at the head of the class hiccupping uncontrollably as he was trying to explain to this guy how it always happened whenever he got stressed, and all the while Professor Courtney is just getting more and more pissed off. Alexi eventually had to go get a doctor’s note to prove that he wasn’t being a dick… but of course Finals were over by that point, and we were all out of Courtney’s class anyway. Alexi didn’t care though. He marched it right into the guy’s office, slapped the note on his desk, and was all, ‘See? See?’!”

Brian’s voice trailed off in laughter as his eyes continued to look inward and back, head slowly rotating as he attempted to distract himself with his surroundings. His fingers twitched nervously over the receiver of his rifle.

“That thing’s on safe, ain’t it?” Otis asked.

The thumb of Brian’s hand flexed, and he nodded absently. “Sure… sure…”

“Brian?”

The not-quite man looked over at Otis, eyes wide.

“You okay, boy?”

“I’m afraid because they’re not back yet,” he admitted. “I know what I said about our best going out there, but… They should have been back by now.”

He looked back into the valley again, fingers twitching erratically at the knuckles.

“Yeah…” Otis agreed. He thought about the situation a while, the stirrings of a plan beginning to form at the back of his mind—a plan that involved himself and a few of the others loading up into one of the scavenged diesels and going for a drive. His hand traveled up to the team radio at his shoulder, drifting up his body like a spider, but before he could hit the button, Fred’s voice cracked in everyone’s ears.

“Movement; my station!”

“Whoa shit…” Otis whispered to himself. He hit the talk button before the channel could come alive like a sewing circle and barked, “Everyone: report in now!”

“Still barricaded here in our house; full view of the cleft,” Greg said.

“Same position as before,” Isaiah said a moment later. “Looking down at the valley entrance from the brush. Good vantage for anything coming in or going out. All in my team accounted for.”